much bigger fan of the vegetative part of the plant than the seeds, which it sounds like is your issue. Yes, the seeds can be overpowering if not used sparingly.

Get you a good bulb of fennel though. Slice it super thin and add a small splash of good white wine vinegar and maybe a bit of salt and pepper for simple salad. Or put it in a regular greens based salad. Or saute some up with some onions and add it to sliced potatos that you'd bake up like a gratan. Or make a version of potato soup with fennel instead of leeks. Save the woodier green stalks for vegetable stock, and save the fronds for a garnish.

First, do you simply not like anise flavors? Because if not you may never love this plant.

Plus however many on the bulb. Cut into quarters, brown in butter, braise for 20 minutes, then reduce, add a little salt, pepper and parmesan. Unbelievable, subtle

Also, you can dry the stalks and fronds, lay them across the grill bars and lay fish or pork over them to roast. Fish especially, really spectacular. The fish, not the dried fennel stalks. You'll want to throw those out.

DrAwkward wrote:If SKID ROW likes them enough to take them on tour, they must have something going on, right?

Get some whole coriander seeds, put them in a mortar and crack the seeds open into quarters with the pestle. Do not grind them into powder. Finely chop a large clove of garlic and mix the chopped garlic with the cracked coriander seeds. Stir the garlic and coriander mix into a shallow bowl of olive-oil and pour all of this onto plain kalamata or green olives and mix it all through the olives. Your olives now taste 20 times better than they did when you brought them home from the deli.

Bulbs are ok but i've only ever had them raw in salads. I'll try some of these suggestions above.